automated elections and opposed moves to open the ballot boxes containing machine-generated COCs. Enrile sought a compromise by proposing the creation of a technical working group that will hold a separate inquiry in the legitimacy of the automated election results. Dilangalen left the plenary after Zubiri made the motion to open the COCs from overseas absentee voting (OAV). After and six hours of joint session, canvassing for manually counted COCs were begun with OAVs from Laos being the first COC canvassed. Aquino and Roxas led after the first day that the COCs were canvassed. COCs from Guam, Brunei, Papua New Guinea and Thailand were the other COCs canvassed before Congress adjourned for the day. By the end of the week, the joint committee was avail to canvass 131 COCs, except for two: one COC from the Bahamas had irregularities and was deferred, while the COC from Iran was found to be empty. As well, 26 countries and territories recorded zero votes for all positions namely: Guyana, Barbados, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Antigua and Barbuda, Cayman Islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Turks and Caicos Islands, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Nepal, Dominican Republic, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Tanzania, and Iran (as stated before). This led to Senator Aquilino Pimentel, Jr. to question the COMELEC on the reason for the dismal result of overseas Filipinos failing to vote. May 31–June 4 The main crux of contention during the canvassing for the COCs transmitted electronically was the issue of null votes, i.e. overvotes, undervotes, abstentions, and votes were not tallied in CoCs because of incomplete transmission. The Aquino-Roxas Bantay Balota (ARBB, "Aquino-Roxas ballot watch") said that 3 million votes were considered null votes, and 10-15% of votes from Roxas' strongholds in Western Visayas and Central Visayas were wasted. In addition, according to them, if to 50-60% of the votes were for Roxas, he would've lost 250,000-300,000 votes. ARBB did not question null votes for the presidential election, where Aquino is leading. The commission, however, said that the nullified votes are the equivalent of "stray votes" before automation, and that rules on stray or null votes would apply even if votes were manually counted in an electoral protest, chairman Jose Melo said. Other frequent objections by lawyers representing the candidates were the lowering of thresholds of votes canvassed locally, which were then transmitted to the commission's servers, and mismatching figures in the